The Founder's Letter is traditionally when the founders
spell out their vision for the company. But Page
explained that he's so "pleased with Sundar’s performance"
and because "the majority of our big bets are in Google" that he
decided to give Pichai "the bully-pulpit here" to talk about
Google.

A more cynical take would be that Page also wanted to sidestep
talking about the controversies plaguing the other side of
Alphabet, the so-called "Other Bets" division outside of the
Google unit.

Eventually, this will all lead to a work world where smart,
thinking, artificial intelligence computers rule our lives. He
writes:

The next big step will be for the very concept of the 'device' to
fade away. Over time, the computer itself—whatever its form
factor—will be an intelligent assistant helping you through your
day. We will move from mobile first to an AI first world.

And this means our phones will become our co-worker assistants:

As we look to our long-term investments in our productivity tools
supported by our machine learning and artificial intelligence
efforts, we see huge opportunities to dramatically improve how
people work. Your phone should proactively bring up the
right documents, schedule and map your meetings, let people know
if you are late, suggest responses to messages, handle your
payments and expenses, etc.